About us

Who we are

We were unsettled ex-agency people who became bored, twitchy, and disenchanted with what we were doing in various high-level Enormicom positions, handling accounts like McDonalds, Coke, and, insert big-or-cool-company-brand-vying-for-market-leadership-and-fighting-the-eternal-battle-for-percentage-gain-points here. Systems thinkers all, we started to connect the constellation of dots between resources, growth, population, consumption — and marketing. And we realized we needed to change our priorities.

Started in 2002, egg is a hybrid advertising-design-social-interactive creative brand communications and product development company, whose sole raison d’etre is to promote the products, the services, and the brands that are similarly systems-thinking — if brands can indeed be said to think — and that have an overarching regard for the greater impact and import of their business on society as a whole.

To find out more about the way we are structured, the way we think, and the way we view the world, click here.

Marty McDonald

Marty is Creative Director at egg. He has 20 years of national advertising agency experience, with several Cannes Lions, Effies and Clios to his name, for clients ranging from industry leaders like Coca Cola, Southwest Airlines and Stonyfield Farm, to successful next generation companies like renewable energy start-up Southwest Windpower and social enterprise Better World Books.

After graduating from Duke University and then studying at the School of Visual Arts in New York, Marty began his career as an art director and worked at large agencies in Austin and Baltimore before becoming Creative Director at DDB Worldwide in Seattle.

Becoming increasingly restless and indifferent working on business as usual after 15 years in the industry, Marty experienced a seminal offsite brand strategy session with executives at progressive-minded Stonyfield Farm that served as both a personal and professional wake up call. He made the leap and opened egg in 2002 to work with the clients, businesses, and brands pushing the bounds of possibility around sustainability, and digging into the meatiest issues of the day.

egg has since been nominated by AIGA for a Corporate Recognition Award and featured in the preeminent creative publications Communications Arts and the One Show as a green communications and branding leader. In 2007, egg became the first national marketing firm to go carbon neutral and is one of the founding B Corporation members (http://bit.ly/O8L9vC) who are setting a new corporate standard for social and environmental performance.

Marty has post-graduate certificates in Sustainable Business and Entrepreneurship from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, and has sat on the Design Committee at Cornish College for the Arts, the Sustainability Committee for the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, and the Design & Resource Center Committee for the Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation & Development Authority.

Hilary Bromberg

Hilary is Strategy Director at egg. She spent most of her life in the Northeast, where she was educated by Quakers, who literally taught her how to hug trees, and then at MIT and Harvard, where she was trained as a cognitive neuroscientist, and also picked up a degree in literature along the way.

After conducting far too much research in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics, she moved to NYC, where her background gave her an uncanny grasp of branding and marketing. After working as a strategy consultant for brands from Hershey’s to Ex-Lax, she moved out to a high-desert yurt in New Mexico, where she spent three years writing a dystopic novel, which she published soon after moving to Seattle (and joining egg) in 2006.

Hilary’s obsessions include media ecology, transpersonal psychology, and primal foods. She seeks out cultural trends and deeper patterns, new models for sustainable living, the numinous and unseen, the fringy and extreme. She is happiest with dirt between her toes and bread dough beneath her fingernails.

Chris Cobb

Chris is Client Services Director at egg. After graduating from USC film school, Chris began his career making movies. Like so many in Hollywood, he got into filmmaking because it combined a love of writing with the ability to turn that writing into something unique and cool and great. But once out of film school, he learned very quickly that a practical, real-world skill set was required to produce any movie, let alone the unique, cool, great ones. So he learned how to produce.

The combo of writing and producing led Chris down some interesting paths - working in a start-up, developing for TV, and helping invent a technology you use on your phone today. Along the way he migrated into brand storytelling, which led to brand and marketing strategy. One of his first major roles in that arena was as director of brand development for an up-and-coming company called Starbucks.

Since then, Chris has made lasting contributions to some of the world’s most successful brands. Whether client-side at companies like Hallmark, helping to lead renegades like Zombie Interactive and Honkworm.com, or agency-side managing projects and accounts for companies like Samsung, Microsoft, Smirnoff, Dell or (RED), Chris has always had the same focus - to develop new products, launch new brands, open new markets, reach new customers, push the boundaries of new technology, and where possible, change the way the game is played.